Feature creatures, take note: If you like tweaking, selecting, optimizing, and customizing, read on. Personally, I'm usually not big on extras. But the VSX-94TXH, Pioneer's latest high-range A/V receiver in the company's Elite line, boasts an options list with enough unusual, interesting, and downright useful functions that I'm climbing down off my high horse for a bit.

Importantly, the basics are well represented, too: full-function HDMI 1.3a inputs (four of 'em) with Faroudja DCDi upscaling, video cross-conversion from lesser formats to HDMI output, 7 x 140 watts of rated power, THX Select 2 certification, onboard decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio (given a compatible player, of course), and auto-setup and calibration with included mike. And these are still the basics.

Setup
Physical setup imposed no special demands. I connected my 6.1-channel speaker array and hooked up Blu-ray Disc/DVD, SACD, and HD-cable sources via HDMI, component, and multichannel-analog means. I already have a network cable from my router to my rack, which I connected to the Pioneer's Ethernet jack for its Home Media Gallery streaming functions. My Comcast cable box provided the perfect opportunity to try out the receiver's analog-to-HDMI conversion and upscaling. Both proved excellent.

Next, with the Pioneer's calibration mike at my usual listening position, I fired up its MCACC (Multi-Channel Acoustic Calibration Control) automation. The full routine of noise bursts took about 5 minutes, and it yielded quite accurate channel levels and crossover settings for my setup. MCACC also includes two different auto-EQ routines, one for speaker/room-correction, which Pioneer dubs "Acoustic Cal EQ," and one for "Standing Wave," which attempts to mitigate low-frequency room anomalies.

Then there's what Pioneer calls "Full-Band Phase Control," which purports to "minimize group delay between the middle- and low-frequency ranges," promising, among other benefits, "better surround integration for multichannel sources." As best as I could determine, the process attempts to time-align the speakers to compensate for the "late" arrivals of sound from the woofers and the midranges, which originates from further back than the sound from a tweeter. (I should mention in passing that some eminent speaker designers and analysts disagree energetically about the fundamental need for such correction or compensatory design.) I'm not quite sure how the Pioneer (or any similar system) could "know" if the midrange (for example) from a given speaker arrived directly or if the mike was instead "hearing" a reflection, with its consequently longer path length. Suffice to say, it's a slippery subject.

Nonetheless, I was generally happy with the Pioneer's results in the amplitude and frequency domains. Its auto-EQ routines are quite sophisticated, though the user interface is a bit obscure, particularly if you elect the "Professional" option. This allows you to adjust the "time window" for analysis, thereby limiting corrections more to direct, first-arrival sounds or opening its calculations to include more reflected sounds (and thus room effects). Complicated, for sure — but most users will likely not sweat it and just let the receiver do its thing.

But there's more: You can also connect the receiver's serial port to your PC and use a Windows program downloadable from Pioneer to achieve still finer control and to generate graphs of the data collected by MCACC. Time prevented me from fully exploring all of that, but it looks pretty cool. If your inner geek takes you there, have a ball.

The Pioneer converts incoming analog video — composite, S-, or component — each up to the "higher" formats and to HDMI. The resultant digital output can be set to either "Auto" or "Pure," as well as to various resolutions. Auto mode will automatically detect the native resolution on most HDMI displays and set the receiver accordingly; this will yield 1080i or 720p conversion, in most cases. The Pure mode preserves incoming resolution and simply converts to digital for output via HDMI. Or the receiver can be set to scale everything to 480/576p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p — though 1080p output works only on 480i/p or 576i/p signals. But I was puzzled to find Pioneer relegates any mention of these settings to the back of the manual, under "Using Other Functions." I was also puzzled by the fact that, oddly, they're not accessed via the onscreen menus, but only on the small front-panel display.

Performance
Well, I've exhausted enough of my column-inches already, so let's get to the truly important stuff. The VSX-94TXH had ample power to drive my quite high-end speaker suite to cinematic levels and well beyond in my studio of 2,500-plus cubic feet — and it sounded just fine in doing so. I wasn't crazy about the effect of the MCACC equalizations, but these are defeatable and manually modifiable, so no worries. Anyway, every room/loudspeaker setup — or, if experience is any guide, the same setup when it's rerun with the mike moved a few inches — will induce very different results, so this has precisely zero predictive value upon your experience.

The Full Band Phase control definitely did something, changing the "texture" of some elements and the overall spatial sense of both stereo and surround. But I'm not ready to say it was "better" (or, necessarily, "worse") in either sense; I'd need a lot more time, and controlled listening, to make any value judgment here. Being largely a purist at heart, I mostly left this control disengaged — but by all means, give it a listen.

The Short Form

Price $1,599 / pioneerelectronics.com / 800-421-1404

Snapshot

Excellent video conversion, Internet-audio streaming, and extensive auto-setup/EQ features are icing on the cake in this high-performance receiver.

Plus

•Outstanding audio/video performance •1080i or 1080p scaling to HDMI from all video inputs •Onscreen displays over HDMI •4 full-function HDMI 1.3a inputs •Accurate auto-setup and extensive EQ and processing options

Minus

•Non-illuminated remote •Plain-Jane onscreen displays

Key Features

•7 x 40 watts rated output •4 HDMI v1.3a 1080p-capable inputs •Transcodes composite-, component-, and S-video to HDMI; deinterlaces 480i; scales up to 1080p (480i/p signals) or 720p/1080i •Onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHd, DTS-HD Master Audio •Ethernet port for streaming audio from PC or Internet; USB input •Sirius/XM satellite radio-ready •Optional iPod dock •16 5/8 x 7 3/8 in; 37 1/2 lb

Test Bench

Pioneer's latest receiver produced uniformly excellent bench results: Linearity and S/N were close to perfect on both PCM and Dolby Digital signals, while distortion and frequency response were nearly as good (the latter, in particular, on 96/24 PCM). Power output was generous in 2- and 1-channel tests, and the 94TXH was happy enough driving 4-ohm loads. With 5 and 7 channels driven, and its clamping circuitry in full effect, it fell well short of 100 watts per channel, but the result was still better than some receivers of similar ratings we've seen, and in any event, this is of no real-world consequence. Relatively high distortion detected in the subwoofer output when driven by 6-channel and 2-channel signals was unusual and not caused by waveform clipping in the usual sense, but rather a kind of squeezing/tilting of the signal that I associate with digital arithmetic errors (see full lab results online). My conjecture is that there's an error of some kind in the summing routine that adds "small" channels' low-passed signals. The odds of this having any effect on sound are virtually nil, and I certainly heard none in my listening tests. Full Lab Results

The Pioneer's conversion of my HD-cable component video to HDMI looked outstanding. I could reliably identify no differences in comparing the two connections to my 52-inch Samsung LCD; 1080p Blu-ray, of course, passed through entirely untouched. The receiver's onscreen displays came up fairly quickly even on HDMI, and sources switched and synced with reasonable efficiency.

Phew. And there's still a lot to mention. The Pioneer's full panoply of Dolby Digital and DTS surround modes sounded terrific. It also decodes internally the new higher-rez formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio — though I couldn't confirm this without a late-generation player on hand that could output those signals. I can say that the clip of Appalachian Spring from Dolby Labs' Sound of High Definition demo Blu-ray Disc sounded fabulous, even in "just" Dolby Digital Plus.

Pioneer's Media Gallery accesses audio files in MP3, AAC/MP4, or FLAC format (plus PCM/WAV) arriving via Ethernet from your networked computers (as long as they have Windows Media Player 11) or from a USB drive or dongle plugged into the receiver's front-panel port. Believe it or not, my XP machine is too antique to run WMP11 (gimme a break: mine is a Mac shop!), so I tried USB only. Media Gallery also delivers Internet radio, which worked fine, accessing a well-balanced list of preaddressed streams, including several dozen good college stations. But there's no obvious way to key in a URL of your own choosing, and nothing in Pioneer's documentation was of any help on this.

Both Sirius and XM satellite radio can arrive via third-party add-on kits. My XM mini-tuner worked fine, and the Pioneer's big, readable onscreen display of XM data stays put while you listen: nice. I found the sound of satellite radio as good as usual (or bad, depending on your point of view) and as variable as always with channel and time of day.

Ergonomics
In sharp contrast to most other high-end receivers today, the 94TXH's onscreen display is plain black-and-white text — no fancy, translucent, high-def displays here. Perhaps Pioneer is spending those dollars on things like a meatier power-supply or premium video-processing silicon; if so, you'll hear no argument from me.

The preprogrammed/learning remote control, commanding as many as 10 components, is a fairly pedestrian button-remote. (There's a single-line LCD readout to display current mode and provide programming feedback.) But it gets the job done with a decent layout, reasonable key-spacing, and colored graphics. However, it requires shift-key combos for some common commands (including selecting XM, which I found a pain), and there's no illumination, just glow-in-the-dark keys. A $1,600 receiver deserves better. Another gripe: It would be nice if the 94TXH let you mix presets, so you could have your favorite stations (however they arrive — FM, satellite, or Internet) in a single "favorites" register. But you can't. You first have to change the input (even though all three are built-in, more or less), then choose the preset register, then select the number.

Otherwise, everything was smooth sailing. All of the Pioneer's myriad options worked — and in general, worked very well indeed.

Bottom Line
So there you have it. Or not — because there's still more. The receiver includes Neural-THX Surround, as well as Pioneer's "Sound Retrieval" audio processing, said to improve sound quality to data-compressed MP3s (I can't say I heard any Lazarus-like reanimation, but then I rarely do). Furthermore, the receiver can integrate an iPod with full control and onscreen display via the company's IDK-80 dock ($99). It can also handle two additional zones (one powered by the surround-back speaker outputs), each with independent IR-control inputs and 12-volt triggers. And there's an RS-232 port.

It's all good, but the core of the Pioneer Elite VSX-94TXH remains its very solid audio and video performance, which can stand toe-to-toe with that of today's competing flagship-class A/V receivers. If you're looking for a receiver that does it all — and a fair bit more — and one that sounds and looks good, you may well have found it.

Full Lab Results
Test Reports RSS Feed
More Test Reports
Back to Homepage
What's New on S&V